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Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoMiraflores Presidential Press OfficeSupporters of Hugo Chavez fill a street as the Venezuelan president’s coffin is paraded through Caracas, the capital.

WASHINGTON — The United States is expected to send a delegation to Hugo Chavez’s funeral later
this week, a move that could send a conciliatory message to Venezuela now that its stridently
anti-American leader has died.

Senior U.S. officials also said yesterday that Washington has no immediate plan to respond in
kind to Venezuela’s expulsion of two U.S. military attaches. That action was taken by Vice
President Nicolas Maduro on Tuesday, hours before he told the world of Chavez’s death.

Yesterday in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, tearful Chavez supporters carried their dead
president through streets still plastered with his smiling image, an epic farewell to a
larger-than-life leader remembered simply as “our commander.” Chavez’s flag-draped coffin was atop
an open hearse that passed hundreds of thousands of supporters on a seven-hour journey to a
military academy in the capital.

At one point, Chavez’s bereaved mother, Elena Frias de Chavez, leaned against the casket.

A priest read a prayer before the procession left the military hospital where Chavez died at age
58. His funeral is set for Friday.

Even as Chavistas said their goodbyes, a sense of foreboding gripped the country. Many
Venezuelans, fearful of possible violence, stocked up on food and fuel as the country pondered
whether the former paratrooper’s socialist agenda will survive him, and for how long.

The 1999 constitution that Chavez pushed through mandates that elections be called within 30
days, but Chavez’s top lieutenants have often improvised with the law. The charter clearly states
that the speaker of the National Assembly — in this case, Diosdado Cabello — should become interim
president if a head of state is forced to leave office within three years of his election. Chavez
was re-elected only in October.

But Chavez anointed Maduro for that role, and the vice president has assumed the mantle even as
the government announced he will represent the ruling socialist party in the presidential vote.
Maduro said on Tuesday that one of the expelled U.S. diplomats tried to stir up a military plot
against Chavez. He also said Chavez’s cancer was an attack by Venezuela’s enemies — an accusation
that the United States dismissed as absurd.

A senior State Department official said the United States is reviewing a response to Venezuela’s
expulsion of the two military officials, and has the right to reciprocate, but, for now, will not
do so.

The U.S. Embassy in Caracas has been without an ambassador since 2010, when Chavez rejected the
U.S. appointee. That led Washington to revoke the credentials of Venezuela’s ambassador.